Past Tense
by SeeMeInTheShadows
Summary: To Yumi, life and happiness are all in the past tense. But all it takes is a certain someone and a little bit of ice cream to pull her back into the happiness of the present.


**Past Tense**

**To Yumi, life and happiness are all in the past tense. But all it takes is a certain someone and a little bit of ice cream to pull her back into the happiness of the present. **

**This is based off of a challenge at Xana's Lair. **

**I do not own Code Lyoko.**

**Any Ooc can be attributed to the fact that they are older (at least sixteen)**

I like Ulrich. I love Ulrich. I am Ulrich's friend. I am Ulrich's girlfriend. I'm having the time of my life, and everything is so much fun with Ulrich. Life is perfect with Ulrich.

No matter how many times I repeat this to myself, and try to convince myself that it is true, I can't do it. It doesn't sound right, and deep down, I know it isn't. I also know that it will never be that way again.

I liked Ulrich. I loved Ulrich. I was Ulrich's friend. I was Ulrich's girlfriend. I had the time of my life, and everything was so much fun with Ulrich. Life was perfect with Ulrich.

This is more truthful than my first thoughts will ever be. Because when I was with Ulrich, everything was absolutely perfect, and there's no denying it. Everybody sees how I am now, and I know that everybody thinks the same thing, they all do. 'It's a shame that she isn't with Ulrich anymore,' they think, 'they seemed so happy together, now she just seems dead.'

Would I be lying if I said I didn't feel dead? I think I would be. I do feel dead. I think that that would be as close to the truth as I will ever get. Because I might not like Ulrich anymore, but there is, and will always be, a part of me that loves him. Or that's how it feels, anyway.

So here I am now, staring out into the world around me from the comfort of my porch where a cool breeze is blowing gently against me. But I don't notice it as I usually do. It is just like me. It's just there; not feeling, not alive. It doesn't have the cool comfort that it usually brings along with it, like it understands exactly what I'm feeling.

I need to go to school, I know I do. But I can't. Because He's at school, and I just can't face him. I can't give him that satisfaction he'll feel when he sees what he has done to me. I won't let him get the better of me. Even though he has got the better of me, I won't let him know it. For all the school knows, I have a severe case of flu.

I know my friends are worried, Aelita tried calling me, asking if I was okay. I put on a fake cough and scratchy voice and told her I was okay, but still sick. But I know I'm not okay, I haven't been okay since Ulrich started the talk, the talk that ended it. It's weird. I thought I was strong, the leader of the team, never budging. I was, just not enough, and not for a friend.

In the end, your friends can hurt you in ways far worse than anything your enemies could hope to do.

"Do you want to go get some ice cream?"

His voice startled me, I didn't even realize that he had come. He was either very quiet or I was too lost in my own thought to hear him, though in my defense, it was probably a bit of both. He's smiling, and I can't just resist, plus ice cream does sound good.

"You know," he says, "you look surprisingly well to be home sick and in bed with a bad case of flu. If I didn't know any better, I would say you're skipping, but I can't say. Because technically speaking, I'm skipping too. That is, unless your flu only acts up if you're close to school."

"No," I respond, "but somehow I think you know why I'm not there."

"I do," he says, eyeing the street and all of the cars passing by, "but I also know that you need someone, and since no one else was going to take the job, I figured it might as well be me. No one can cure a broken heart as much as I can."

"I was abandoned, dumped, worthless," I hissed to him, "and you think that it's all okay, and it's just a broken heart, and you can cure it with a snap of your fingers?"

"No, I don't, "he said, "but you need some fun."

"Fun is simply a thing of the past," I reply.

He's eyeing the cars again, I know he envies them; he hasn't been exactly quiet about his wants to get one, and get out of the death trap he's driving now. Then he turns to me, "but it could be a thing of your future."

He can see that I don't believe him.

"I've been dumped before, you can get over it, you can find someone new, you can make amends," he whispers to me, "it seems like its the end, but its just the beginning of something else. You need to look at it in the right light."

"Says you," I say to him, the words seem to be cascading from my mouth, "didn't you leave me? And aren't you the one doing most of the dumping here?"

"Technically speaking, M' Dear, you are the one who left, remember transferring away for a year to get away from it all, or was that my imagination?" I ignore what he called me and stare right into him. "And I might dump," he continues, "but I have also been dumped."

"Whatever you say and true, you have been dumped, but that was your fault to begin with. And what happened to keep in touch?"

"I texted you about ten times a week, how can that not be keeping in touch?" he asks.

"And I told you, it isn't the same, I meant something along the lines of, lets go to a party, or hang out, and then I came back, you didn't have to act all awkward about me being back in person, though."

"That might be true, but at least I wasn't the worst, which brings me to the point of this lovely walk, we're here," he says as he motions be into the small ice cream shop."

He slips in after me and opens his wallet. His face falls, but I think I detect a bit of happiness in it, like he's lying, but he can't contain it. I put it out of my mind, he can be a very convincing actor when he wants to be, which isn't often, but when he is, he won't even tell you what part he isn't being honest on.

"Oops, I forgot my money at school, I only have enough for one sundae, I guess we'll have to share, if you don't mind, of course," he says in that tone that he used on Aelita whenever we were on Lyoko, usually right after he called himself a knight and her the princess. I can't believe he's using it on me, I know he's just a pig.

But I shrug and say I don't mind. I don't know what demon has possessed me to agree, but whatever it is, I will have to find it and strangle the life, or death, from it. Because that is not a decision that my rational self would have made. I'm smarter than that, so why did I agree?

He orders a large, and I notice that he could have easily paid for two smalls. But I also notice that I don't mind as much as I should, because its sort of nice, just the thing that friends do for each other, get them more ice cream and let them play hooky for the day, even playing it themselves for them. I'm suddenly reminded of the good days, were we where tight; we still are, just not as much.

We spend the time with him telling me anything I've been missing, which is very entertaining. It is only when something he says makes me laugh out loud and spray him with ice cream do I realize something.

I'm having fun.

And even more so, I'm having fun, and I'm having fun without Ulrich. And the fun is now, it isn't in the past. It isn't a memory. It's now, and for some reason, I can't help but believe that it will always be in the present from now on.

And that is the fact I am most amazed and happy about, because for so long, I though Ulrich was my life, and when he dumped me, I thought I wouldn't be happy again. But this friend of mine picked me up, and put me back on my feet, not on Ulrich's back, and not laying down, waiting to be stepped on, but on my own two feet.

He walks me home, and I go back to my porch. But the wind has feelings again, and I see the joy in everyday life. It is only a few minutes afterwards that I realize that he had been complaining about a test that was today, one that counted as most of his grades and was very important, which besides will have to make him study and work even harder, will also make his teachers and family angry. And today was mashed potatoes.

I never said he didn't know the meaning of sacrifice; he just doesn't do it often. And what I thought was love for Ulrich, has changed.

I think I'm going to kiss Odd Della Robbia tomorrow.

**I hope you enjoyed reading it, I really did enjoy writing it. As I said, this was a challenge from Xana's Lair which was write a pairing you have never done before, and since Yumi and Odd are one I haven't done before, I wrote this. You can find the link in my profile. I have two more YumiXOdd fic ideas in my head write now, one of which is a sequel. Again, Ooc, sorry about that, but as I said, they are older.**

**Please, Please, Please Review.**


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